Eveline, Dubliners and James Joyce :: Joyce Dubliners Essays

Eveline, capital of Irelanders and James Joyce Eveline is the story of a young teenager facing a dilemma where she has to choose between living with her father or escaping with Frank, a sailor which she has been courting for some time. The story is one of fifteen stories written by James Joyce in a collection called capital of Irelanders. These stories follow a certain pattern that Joyce uses to express his ideas Joyces focus in Dubliners is almost exclusively on the bourgeois Catholics known to himself and his family(the Gale Group). Joyces early life, family background, and his catholic background appear in the way he writes these stories. Where Joyce usually relates his stories to events in his life, there are some stories which are really events that took place in his life (Joyce, Stanislaus). James Joyce in his letter to Grant Richard writes My intention was to write a chapter of the moral history of my country and I chose Dublin for the scene because that city s eemed to me the center of paralysis. I tried to present it to the indifferent public under four of these aspects childhood, adolescence, maturity and public life. The stories are arranged in this order. (5 May 1906 Selected letters). (Ingersoll) In the story, Evelines family is described poor, and they probably dont live a very comfortable life. The dust and Evelines struggle for money mentioned in the story all go to explain the misery in their life Besides, the invariable squabble for money on Saturday nights had begun to weary her unspeakably(Joyce5). This misery also appears in other stories by Joyce like The Sisters and Araby. Joyce could have related his childhood days when his family was in some financial crises to the family background of Eveline in the story but the Joyces family fortunes took a sharp arise for the worse during Joyces childhood (Gale Group). From the story, we are told that it is from this misery, and her fathers attitude that Eveline decides she would leave home, although, she does not leave at the end of the story. Joyce could have been writing about the urge the had to leave Dublin during his youth because he cites the city of Dublin as the center of paralysis (the Gale Group).